Dead and Dreaming
by Kilerkki
Summary: Ten minutes ago an A rank mission went S rank, and now Namiashi Raidou is fighting for his life. Raidou, Genma, and the scars that make a man. [Oneshot]


Dead and Dreaming

Incredible thanks for this fic go to all the writers at Scarlet Spiral, especially iamzuul (who graciously allowed me to use her original character Tanaka Midoriko) and Hey-Diddle-Diddle, who gave up valuable sleep to beta-read. Most sincere thanks and praise go to Nezuko, whose marvelous characterization of Genma I have borrowed. Any flaws in his depiction are my own; any praise is to be laid at her feet.

The events of the story, and the character interactions, are based on the backstory for Namiashi Raidou and Shiranui Genma as played at Scarlet Spiral. Originally the plan was for me to write Raidou's point of view and Nezuko to write Genma's; the theme was to involve injury and death and its effects upon those who survive in whatever degree. Then the story took the bit in its teeth and ran with it, and now…well, I suppose it's still about injury and death, but it's come to focus more on Raidou himself, and the strength that keeps him going. To a broader extent, it's the same strength that drives every ninja of Konoha to fight for his village, his friends, his family…and himself.

(This fic is set approximately three years after the Kyuubi's attack, when Raidou is 22, and Genma is 20.)

oOo

_Waiting for you  
All my sins...  
I said that I would pay for them if I could come back to you  
All my innocence is wasted on the dead and dreaming_

– Counting Crows, "Angels of the Silences"

oOo

At some point in the last day things went from bad to worse, and in the last half-hour they took a sharp turn towards the disastrous. Ten minutes ago an A-rank mission went S-rank, and now Namiashi Raidou is fighting for his life.

His ANBU partner is already stumbling, fingers faltering out of half-finished seals to clutch at a bloody gash in the soft armor of his vest. Raidou's eyes can't even track their opponent's movements. One moment Takeshi is standing tall and strong, flashing through the seals for the Katon jutsu that will incinerate both the missing-nin they were sent to track down and half the forest around them. In the next he's falling back, blood spurting bright to stain his vest and side, and only a whisper in the leaves tells Raidou that anyone is there at all.

"Too damn fast," Takeshi pants, splaying his fingers against his side in a vain effort to stem the scarlet tide. "I didn't even see—"

He breaks off, and beneath the bone-colored mask with its slightly foolish red designs Raidou can almost see his face twisting with pain and fury. "Too deep..."

"Don't move," Raidou says sharply. "You'll bleed out faster. Take a blood pill." He digs one out of his own belt-pouch and tosses it over without dropping either of the kunai in each hand; with their quarry lurking out there somewhere just beyond his range of vision, he can't afford to let his guard down even that slightly. Takeshi's wounded now, and the blood's flowing freely enough that even with the pill he's out of the fight. If they had another man here maybe Raidou could spare the time and the attention to bandage Takeshi's wound and get him back on his feet, but if they had another man here it would be Genma, and things never would have got this bad in the first place.

oOo

They returned to Konoha in the small hours of the very early morning, and they went out again drinking that night, as they always did. Genma favored his left arm still, but the bandages swathing slashed muscles from elbow to shoulder were nearly invisible under the long sleeves of his shirt, and his lips quirked languidly around the cigarette he'd lit as soon as they leaned up to the bar. He already had a small crowd around him, teenage girls in too-tight shirts who were ready and anxious to spend their money buying drinks for a shinobi. Raidou, for once uninjured, couldn't begrudge him the attention. The mission had been long and hard and dirty, and there was a pretty brown-eyed civilian girl just a meter or two down from him...

The glass he'd raised in silent salute to the girl, accompanied by a quick flashing smile, nearly shattered on the bar when a hand slid into his back pocket and curled around the flat metal plate of the hitai'ate he'd stuffed there when he pulled it off earlier. He couldn't help his muscles' automatic stiffening, but at least he did manage not to smash his elbow back at throat-level. Only two people in the village who'd do that, and Genma never _really_ carried through with his teasing.

"Missed you, Raidou-kun," Midoriko's low voice crooned into the back of his neck. "You haven't been to see me in _weeks._"

"Just got back," Raidou said, a little shortly. Her hand was still in his pocket, and she'd lost interest in the hitai'ate now. "I—dammit, woman!—I thought you'd moved on."

The brown-eyed girl was already turning away, tossing her hair with a forced casualness. Raidou sighed and managed to turn just enough to face Midoriko. Not that she wasn't worth looking at, with her auburn hair caught up in a loose bun and her shimmering green mini-dress as tight as if it'd been painted on. It was easy enough to forget she was an ANBU captain when she was dressed like that and when her lips were quirking in a smile no one could ever call innocent. "I thought I'd give you some time to recover," she purred. "Build up your stamina."

Genma was looking over as well now, light brown eyes crinkling in amusement. "How come _she_ gets to do that, Rai-chan?"

"Because I—" Midoriko leaned over and whispered in Genma's ear, low and throaty and unspeakably obscene. Genma laughed; Raidou flushed.

"Once you're finished discussing my preferences," he said with as much dignity as he could muster. "D'you want something?"

"You'll do well, for starters," she said, but she pulled away instead of closer, patting him swiftly as she relinquished her grip. "But I'll have to take a rain-check on that. Take care of yourself, prettyboy." She pinched his cheek, turned, and vanished as swiftly as she'd come.

"Mission?" Genma asked quietly.

Raidou's hand slid back into his pocket, and paper crinkled under his fingers. "Yeah."

"Well." Genma dropped his cigarette on the floor and crushed it with a swift, grinding step. Then he reached around Raidou's back and snagged his forgotten beer. "Drink up, pal. It may be the last you see for a while."

"Yeah," Raidou agreed, and drank.

oOo

The whispering leaves still at last, leaving the forest far too quiet for Raidou's comfort. Quarters are still too close to employ his katana among the thick trees; he keeps his kunai out and in his hands, and he keeps less than half an eye on Takeshi as the other man struggles to stanch the bleeding and bandage the gaping slice in his side. The Kirigakure missing-nin they pursue hasn't run again. He's toying with them, mocking Konoha's best, and Raidou swears he's not going to get away with it.

"Didn't even see him," Takeshi mutters, for the fifth time in four minutes. The clock ticking steadily away in Raidou's head reminds him that it's actually been three minutes and fifty-four seconds since the first time Takeshi said that, as he reeled back with his fingers a vain dam against the red surge. "Can't even see now."

"Don't take your mask off," Raidou says sharply. He edges a step to the side, allowing Takeshi a little further into the narrow range of vision the eye-slits of his own mask afford. "He's still out there."

"Hurts," Takeshi says softly.

A leafy branch rustles, ten meters or so to Raidou's left. He whips around just in time; the wind of a passing kunai ruffles his hair, and another grazes his mask just below the cheekbone. He snaps his left-hand kunai in the direction of his attacker, but the missing-nin's moved on again already, and only a mocking laugh echoes through the trees around them.

"Take another blood pill." Raidou turns slowly to scan the forest around them, left hand dipping back to his belt-pouch to curl his fingers around the comforting wrapped hilt of another kunai. "Was there something on his weapon? You shouldn't be bleeding out this fast."

"Dunno." Takeshi's breath is coming lighter and faster now; he sounds almost ready to hyperventilate. "Burns. Won't stop bleeding. Can't see—"

"Don't take your mask off!" Raidou snaps, wheeling. "Dammit, Takeshi—"

He's too slow. The other man's slippery fingers are already fumbling at the smooth edges of his mask, and as Raidou takes an angry step toward him, the mask falls into Takeshi's lap. He leans back against the tree-trunk behind him, staring up at Raidou and _through_ him, and his face is as white as the lacquered ceramic of his mask.

"Burns," he whispers.

Behind Raidou, a twig breaks.

oOo

Drinking wasn't quite as fun anymore, with the orders crinkling in Raidou's pocket and the brown-eyed girl flirting now with the teenage chuunin on her other side. Raidou nursed his beer with a perverse slowness and half-listened to Genma's banter at his left shoulder. Somehow—he wasn't quite sure how Genma managed it—the fan-club was drifting away by the time Raidou finished his beer, and only one red-haired girl remained to pout when Genma slapped a handful of cash down on the bar and hooked a hand around Raidou's biceps. "See you later, sweetheart," Genma told the girl, patting her cheek with his other hand. She blushed and leaned into him, and Genma laughed and headed out.

The cool night breeze kissed their faces and ran its fingers through Raidou's hair as they left the bar and turned right towards ANBU HQ. A few streetlights broke up the darkness and washed out the stars; Raidou paused beneath one to dig the crumpled paper out of his pocket.

"Missing-nin?" Genma said, peering over his shoulder at the neatly printed orders. "A-rank. D'you think they remember we just got back from one of those?"

"I'm partnered with Shimino Takeshi," Raidou said quietly.

"I _can_ read, y'know." Genma nudged him with a shoulder. "Mist-nin, eh?" He tongued the toothpick he'd snagged at the bar to the other side of his mouth and added, "Should take me along anyway. A lot of those guys use poison."

"Kobayashi'd be more use, with your arm like that." Raidou folded the paper in precise fourths, more neatly than Midoriko had, and slid it back into his pocket.

"He's in hospital," Genma reminded him, starting off again. "We were gonna visit him."

"Right." Raidou tipped his head back and stared up at the pale stars. "Well, wait till I get back, okay? They catch you breaking into the Psych Ward on your own, they'll probably keep you there."

"Like your chances are any better. I've got _connections._" The toothpick flipped neatly to the other corner; he chewed it meditatively for a moment before he offered, "You could turn it down. They probably haven't even processed the report from our last mission yet."

"I'll be fine," Raidou said, a little more sharply than he'd meant. He took a deep breath and added, "Takeshi's a good man. We'll be back by the time your bandages are off—and if Midoriko invites me over then, I'm _not_ bringing you."

"I've got a standing invitation," Genma said smugly.

"Yeah, well, you—" Nothing came to mind, so instead of stumbling over the insult he simply acted. His fist clipped Genma's ribs, and Genma's toothpick impaled itself somewhere in the thick ribbing of his turtle-neck collar, and they raced, laughing, the rest of the way to ANBU HQ.

oOo

There's a reason two of ANBU's best young Hunters were sent on this mission to take out one man, and why what the mission orders called an A-rank has already become an S-rank in Raidou's mind, and why Takeshi is still sitting against the tree, staring, as his blood muddies the ground beneath him. Mist Village hunter-nin couldn't kill this man; their failure has given Konoha a chance to capture his body and all the secrets it holds, but it's also given Raidou and Takeshi a chance to die.

The twig snaps behind Raidou, but the real attack comes from in front.

He wheels too fast, perhaps, slamming the kunai in his right hand deep into the gut of the man behind him, left hand sweeping up and over to slice through the throat. He has one glimpse of narrow dark eyes and a cruel, savage smile before the man collapses into a puddle of water—_Mizu Bunshin!_—and Takeshi screams.

Somehow Raidou's partner has made it to his feet, still with his left hand clutching the gash in his side, right hand now holding a kunai up at collar-bone level. But it's not enough, will never be enough, and Raidou and Takeshi and the enemy know it.

The missing-nin is tall, nearly as tall as Raidou, but thinner; there's a light pack strapped to his back, and under it Raidou catches glimpses of the straps that wind around the man's bare torso and bind his heavy mechanical arm to his right shoulder. _Chakra-manipulated,_ Raidou remembers from the briefing, _and he uses chakra to increase his speed,_ but none of that really matters right now. Not when that glittering arm is reaching for Takeshi's face, three clawed fingers snapping out, and Raidou is _too slow_, and suddenly Takeshi _has_ no face.

A few spatters of blood fleck Raidou's mask and bare arms; they burn like acid where they touch skin. The Kiri-nin rips his claws out of what's left of Takeshi's head, slashing through flesh and splintering bone and leaving only bubbling and oozing wreckage behind; the smell of burning hangs in the air even stronger than the reek of blood and brains. Takeshi's body slumps against the tree trunk and slides slowly down.

Raidou doesn't watch it. One kunai slams into the exposed elbow-joint of the mechanical arm, and he weaves under the wild swing and comes up slashing. The Kiri-nin backflips away, but there's blood on his chest and face now, and not all of it is Takeshi's.

Neither is the slow scarlet trickle oozing from the shallow scratches over Raidou's left shoulder and down his chest, burning as it runs.

oOo

"Way too early for sleep," Genma announced as they turned left from the top of the third-floor stairs in ANBU HQ and headed up the hall past the communal showers. Water hummed and splashed beyond the steamed glass of the doors; someone muttered, someone else moaned. Genma paused, looking speculatively at the doors. "Wonder who that is...d'you think we should give stop in, give them a hand?"

"You'll give them more than a hand if you get going," Raidou said darkly. "I've got to leave at dawn." He kept going, turning the corner again just past apartment 325, where Junsuke had lived until he'd caught a kunai to the gut two months ago. They'd cleaned out his place and sent everything in neat boxes to his widowed mother; Raidou had helped. There was a rookie in that apartment now.

"Of _course_ I'd rather spend the night with you, Rai-chan," Genma reproached him, easily keeping stride. "You don't have to sound so grumpy about it. You know my heart lies—"

"In your pants." Raidou passed Genma's door, neatly labeled 320, and stopped in front of his own door at 318. He dug through his pockets for keys, found them, and set about disabling the traps he'd rigged before leaving a few hours ago.

Genma lit a cigarette and eyed Asuma's door on the other side. "Think the kid's awake?"

"On a mission," Raidou said, canceling the last seal and unlocking the door. Most ANBU trapped their doors, but he'd had to increase his security level by a factor of three or so when he and Genma became friends, and then again when Asuma moved next door in 316. The two of them got altogether too much pleasure out of messing with his books and reorganizing (if you could call it that) his belongings. He was fairly sure that at least one of the many pairs of boxers someone had run up the flagpole by the Heroes' Stone last month had been his, but he sure as hell wasn't claiming them back.

"Too bad." Genma lurked through the door and sprawled himself across the bed, loose-limbed and cat-like. "Can I stay the night?"

"You can have a beer," Raidou said, crouching to dig in the miniature refrigerator beside his desk. Should probably clean it out before he left again; there wasn't much more than yoghurt and beer, but even those could spoil over the course of a long mission. He straightened with two bottles in his hand, tossed one to Genma, and wrenched the cap off the other to take the first swig before he stepped back and let the fridge door close.

Genma had left his cigarette smoldering on the windowsill and rolled onto his back to wrestle with his own bottle. Raidou waited until the younger man had managed to pull the cap off without spilling beer all over the blankets before he dropped down to sit on the floor next to the bed and leaned his head back. "You know I'd rather have you out there at my back," he said after a moment. "Or me at yours. Whatever."

"Yeah, sure." Genma's hand slipped down to tousle his hair roughly. "At least Takeshi doesn't want in your pants too—then I'd have to be jealous. But he's as straight as you are."

"Knock it, Genma," Raidou said irritably. "I'm serious."

"How d'you know I'm not?"

"'Cause." Raidou slouched down a little further and took another pull at his bottle. "You're not serious unless there's blood involved."

"Or sex. That's serious, too."

That was so patently untrue that Raidou didn't think it was even worth a response.

oOo

"You're dead, ANBU-boy," the Kiri-nin says softly, gliding backwards like water over rocky ground. He pulls at the kunai embedded in his mechanical elbow, his eyes never leaving Raidou's masked face. "Can you feel the burn? It's eating into you already. If you're lucky, you'll die before your arm drops off."

"If I'm lucky," Raidou snarls, "you'll never find out."

He lunges forwards again, and this time only the missing-nin's blinding speed saves him from evisceration. Claws ruffle Raidou's hair, and he slams through one of the fastest _kawarimi_ of his life. He ends up in the lower branches of a tree five meters or so from Takeshi's corpse, and in the ten seconds before the Kiri-nin locates him again, he reaches up to run his fingers gingerly over the shallow gashes in his shoulder. The padded shoulder-strap of his vest is cut through, and the sleeveless shirt beneath, and the skin around the lacerations is raw and puffy. Closer to the cuts it feels sticky, bubbly, and his fingers shy away from the cuts themselves as he hisses in pain. The blood sears his calloused finger-tips.

"It's not a poison," the Mist-nin whispers into his ear from behind him. A claw draws a fine line from Raidou's collarbone to his shoulder, slices down through shirt and under vest to settle over his pounding heart. "Just a drop will melt your skin; a scratch will—"

"_Bastard,_" Raidou hisses, and throws his weight backward to hurl both of them out of the tree.

They twist as they fall, snarling, stabbing. Steel claws glance across Raidou's mask, screeching through the lacquer. His kunai sinks into flesh, and blood soaks his hand. Something cracks, shatters. Cold air nips at his cheek.

He wrenches away and hits the ground in a crouch, crushing the life out of some thorny bush. The Mist-nin lands little better, falling to one knee some four meters away from Raidou. His left hand presses flat against his ribs, where blood slowly wells between his fingers.

Just as slowly, he opens his clawed, mechanical right hand. The painted shards of half of Raidou's mask drop almost silently into the fallen leaves.

"Don't take your mask off, ANBU-boy," the man jeers softly. "Take your mask off, and there's only one monster left here. Or are you just scared of scarring up that pretty face? Scared they won't even recognize you anymore, when they find you?"

"They won't need to," Raidou says roughly. "I'm going home on my own. And you're going to die here."

The Mist-nin bares his teeth in a gentle smile. "I shall enjoy," he breathes, "breaking you."

oOo

"You gonna take Midoriko up on it?" Genma asked, sliding off the bed and padding towards the little refrigerator with all the purposeful grace of a hunting cat. "When you get back."

"I dunno." Raidou spun the empty bottle between his palms, watching the lamplight flicker on the brown glass. "Got tangled up with her a year or so ago, 'fore she picked up Shinji. Guess she thought I was kinda boring, though. And she's too fast for me."

"Prude," Genma said affectionately.

"Heh." He didn't bother arguing that; by Genma's standards, he was. "Figured I lived dangerous enough anyway."

"Having second thoughts about the mission?" Genma straightened with another two bottles in his hands, his light brown eyes fixed on Raidou with a curious intensity. "You can still turn it down."

"I'll be _fine,_" Raidou snapped. "I'm not a rookie anymore. Hell, _you're_ the one who came back cut up this time."

"Just don't like the thought of sending you out there without me," Genma said quietly. He sank down on the floor beside Raidou, stretching his legs out and leaning back against the bed, and handed over one of the bottles. "Last time that happened, with the Uchiha kid…"

"That was an ambush. This guy's working alone." Raidou twisted the cap off savagely and took a drink. "You're the one needs looking after all the time. I'll be okay. Easy out, track him down, take him down, back before the week's out. No sweat."

"Hope so." Genma tapped his fingers on the neck of the bottle, four beats so close together they sounded like two. After a moment he asked, "Takeshi's medic-trained, isn't he?"

"More'n me, if that's what you mean." The bottle was a quarter gone already; Raidou dropped it a little to swing between his second and third fingers, watching the liquid swirl in the glassy depths. "I think he can chakra-heal a little. Not medic-level, not even as good as you. But he's good as anyone at field dressings."

"S'one thing, at least." Genma took a long pull, throat working effortlessly as he swallowed. When he lowered the bottle again and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, he was staring off in the direction of Raidou's bookcase. "He'll take care of you," he said. He sounded as if he was trying to convince himself.

Raidou nodded, tipped his bottle back, and waited for Genma to get drunk enough to tease again.

oOo

The Mist-nin lunges forward in a blur of chakra-boosted speed, and Raidou knows he's going to die.

They're both wounded, but the other man has the edge of speed and reach; Raidou can't leap away fast enough to completely dodge the first strike. The tips of two claws rake down the left side of his neck. The third claw rips into his shoulder just above the collarbone, and a fine spray of blood soaks the front of his vest as he wrenches himself away.

But his attacker doesn't stop, and Raidou barely has time to slap up a kunai from its holster before he's dodging again, slamming into a _kawarimi_ and not making it quite far enough. A line of fire burns his left biceps. He leaps to the side again and smashes into a tree hard enough to knock the wind out of him. For a moment his right side is paralyzed by the impact, and he can barely breathe, and the missing-nin is charging at him with a wide maddened smile, and those claws are slicing straight for his face—

He hurls himself forward and right, and for a fraction of a second his right knee wobbles, but it doesn't really matter, because that wobble takes him just a little further to the right. And so the claws that slash across his face catch at the bridge of his nose and miss his left eye by a bare inch, and while they continue slicing down the line of his cheek and jaw, he's still moving.

Both of his kunai bury themselves half an inch apart at the point of the Kiri-nin's collar-bones, and he rips upwards with everything he has, slicing skin and gristle and cartilage and vessels, laying the throat open and almost in half. And the claws are sinking into his shoulder again, but the Kiri-nin is falling back in a fountain of blood that drenches Raidou's burning face and chest. The man's eyes are wide in shock. His mouth moves, but only pink froth bubbles at his lips and at the wider lips of the terrible wounds in his throat.

"I told you," Raidou whispers, pulling away to let the Kiri-nin's body drop wetly onto the ground. "I'm making it back."

oOo

_Thirteen hours later, Raidou still hasn't made it back. He's only a few kilometers from Konoha, but at this point Konoha and safety are as far from him as hope is._

_When a team of ANBU rookies on a routine patrol find him crumpled on his left side in a shallow stream, they think he's dead. One of the boys dares to turn him over, and then they're _sure_ he's dead. But their captain doesn't do more than lay his fingers across the right side of Raidou's ravaged throat before he's snapping at the kids to _run_ for Konoha and get a medic team out here if they have to carry the medics themselves._

_The kids scatter. Their captain waits till he's sure they're gone before he gently unwraps Raidou's fingers from around the bloody dogtags he's still clenching so tightly that the raised characters of Shimino Takeshi's name are indented into his palm. The other ANBU wraps clean bandages around the face that's not really a face anymore, and then he hauls the dying man's body up onto his shoulder and sets out to meet the medics._

_For the next two weeks, as Konoha's best doctors fight to save Raidou's life, Shiranui Genma can do nothing but wait._

_And pray._

oOo

He doesn't wake so much as drift to the surface of a haze of exhaustion, so slowly that for a long time he's aware of nothing more than cool sheets and a sharp smell and a bird singing somewhere a long way away. He floats in darkness and emptiness, and some distant portion of his drug-fogged mind knows that this is wrong.

The last thing he remembers is pitching head-first over the bank of a shallow stream, ripping at the bandages he'd lapped over his tortured face, so desperate for the cold water to soothe his burning wounds that he tore at his dressings regardless of what lay underneath. When his fingers brushed seeping raw flesh, blackness came.

The blackness is still there, but different. Warmth bathes his closed eyelids, and though the bird has stopped singing, there are other sounds equally regular and comforting: the beep of monitors, the faint echo of high-heeled footsteps on a tiled floor, a murmur of voices somewhere in the mid-distance.

And very close, close enough to reach out and touch, the hiss of pages turning, the sharp tick of a pencil against paper, a soft whisper of breathing. A subtle scent, under the acrid hospital odors of rubbing alcohol and drugs and vomit and blood and chalk and rubber and detergent—this is a scent as familiar almost as the metallic tang of blood, but far more welcome. An earthy smell, faintly sweet, like musk and burnt sugar, laced with traces of polished steel and worn canvas.

Genma.

"Hey," Raidou whispers. His throat is raw and hoarse: from screaming maybe? Disuse? How much time has passed here in the darkness? "Am I blind?"

The pencil-strokes stop; he catches a sharp intake of breath, a murmured word that might be a curse or a prayer. But when Genma speaks his voice is light and even, only a little husky. "Your eyes are fine. They bandaged 'em cause it was easier to get the rest of your face that way." The pencil clatters teenily against wood. "You want me to get it?"

Raidou can make his fingers twitch under the blankets, he discovers; it's enough for a small thrill of accomplishment, but finger-twitching is not spectacularly useful. He manages a nod. "How long?"

"Since the hospital got you? Seventeen days." Calloused fingers brush against his temples, parting layers of bandages, folding them back against his forehead like the hitai'ate he hadn't realized he missed. "You spent three in Trauma. This is the first time you've woken since then."

Opening his eyes is even harder than twitching his fingers; for a moment he wonders irrationally if they've been sewn shut, before he realizes that two and a half weeks of coma have probably been nearly as effective. A great deal can happen, in two and a half weeks.

"Takeshi's dead," he says, finally cracking his lids open a little. The light is dim; Genma has drawn the shades across the window by the bed. Raidou blinks away the fuzz in his vision and finds Genma again, standing between his chair and the bed. A book and an open notebook lie open on the table beside the chair; there's a half-eaten sandwich beside them, and half a dozen empty coffee cups. "I brought his tags back. Someone needs to tell his wife. Widow."

"She's been told," Genma says quietly. "They held the service last week, when the team came back with his body. His name is already on the Heroes' Stone."

"Sorry." He isn't sure how to say for what. For asking the question? For missing the service? For letting Takeshi die? For not being enough?

"You better be," Genma complains, as if he can't read the thoughts flickering behind Raidou's dark eyes. "Even stole my first words. I was supposed to say _Idiot, why didn't you dodge?_"

"S'my line." Raidou smiles tiredly. Bandages rub against his lips. "And I did dodge. Just not enough."

"Yeah, well, you coulda fooled me." Genma flings himself back into his chair and stretches his legs out underneath the bed, staring at Raidou. "Gods, your dad is gonna be pissed at you. They only told him a week ago you were alive. And of all the mornings you coulda woke up on, you pick the one after the night the nurses finally pried him out of your room and sent him home. He was swearing the whole way."

"Sounds like Dad." Raidou manages another half-smile, though he doubts Genma can even see it under the bandages. The left side of his face isn't working quite properly. His lips twitch up halfway, and then the muscles in his cheek that should be pulling his smile refuse to move. There's no pain, no sensation at all; it feels curiously as if everything between his left eye and his jaw has vanished in his sleep. Coma.

"You Namiashi are too stubborn for your own good, sometimes. Or other people's." Genma drums his fingers on the tabletop, picks up the pencil, inspects it, and sticks the eraser-end into the corner of his mouth. "Took you a hell of a long time to make up your mind whether to live or die."

"I decided a long time ago," Raidou says quietly. "It just took some persuading."


End file.
